The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt by Jennifer L. Derr

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt by Jennifer L. Derr Nancy E. Gallagher Jennifer L. Derr. The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2019. 255 pp. Ill. $26.00 (978-1-5036-0965-5). Jennifer Derr has written an innovative and well researched study that examines the medical history, human geography, and political economy of the Nile and its built environment. The book begins in 1902 with Nubian villagers anxiously awaiting the completion of a new dam that would submerge their homes and lands. The dam, which was raised twice in subsequent years, allowed for the vast expansion of year-round irrigated land that could produce three or more crops per year. With the now perennial Nile, landowners expanded cotton cultivation along with maize, sugarcane, beans, and vegetables. The hugely productive land greatly enriched Ottoman, British, and Egyptian landowning elites, while the farm laborers and the land itself suffered. The land lost its annual deposit of silt, its rinsing by floodwaters, and its drying and aeration that had long controlled parasites. The depleted soil required quantities of artificial fertilizer. A diet based on maize (corn) lacked basic nutrients and led to pellagra and general poor health. The shifting ecology led to the spread of malaria, hookworm, pellagra, and other diseases. Snails proliferated in moist soil and enabled the spread of new forms of schistosomiasis. Large numbers of people suffered from hepatitis C and liver diseases. Treatment programs for parasitic diseases might result in a cure, but cures were often followed by reinfection the following year. Hierarchical colonial relations limited the effectiveness of public health programs. British engineers designed and managed the dam with Egyptian engineers subordinate to them. Egyptian officials resented and feared British intentions [End Page 532] regarding new dams upriver in Sudan. Egyptian nationalists resented their dependent status and challenged hierarchies established during the British occupation, but authoritarian relationships were replicated after the Free Officers coup of 1952. The Free Officers proclaimed a vast land reform program but landowners divided their land among family members or found other ways to maintain their land holdings. Small landowners often lost their land to large landowners for lack of funds for investment or to carry them over when crops failed. In the 1960s, with the help of Russian engineers and funding, the Free Officers government built an enormous new dam, the Aswan High Dam, that ended the annual flood and enabled the conversion of all Egypt's cultivable land to perennial irrigation. Electricity generated by the dam powered Egypt's industries. Nubians now found their lands completely flooded and themselves unhappily relocated to other areas. The medical ecology again changed with new challenges and difficulties for technocrats and rural communities. The book is concise, well organized, and a pleasure to read. It will interest medical historians and geographers as well as specialists in Egyptian and African history. The illustrations are well selected, and the bibliography is useful. With a massive new dam rising on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, the book could not be timelier. Nancy E. Gallagher University of California, Santa Barbara Copyright © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press